The Ghoul Next Door
Registered by 
GoryDetails
of Nashua, New Hampshire USA on 9/6/2021
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
GoryDetails of Nashua, New Hampshire USA on 9/6/2021 This Book is Currently in the Wild!
1 journaler for this copy...
I got this softcover at Barnes and Noble. It's easily the cutest story about friendship between a boy and a ghoul that I've ever read {wry grin}. Yep, that's actually what happens! 11-year-old Grey is fascinated with the local cemetery, to the point where his school project is a detailed miniature of that same graveyard. But when he trips while carrying it through the cemetery, it falls into a hole - and when he tries to get it out he sees a clawed hand drag it into the depths!
That'd put me off cemeteries for a while, but he's more concerned about losing his project. But that night he has a mysterious visitor, who leaves him a much more detailed miniature graveyard - which turns out to have some actual bones tucked away in the tiny crypts! Yeah, ghouls have a different perspective on things like that.
The tentative friendship develops when Lavinia, the ghoul, tells Grey about her kind and how they came to be - in her case, kidnapped by ghouls as a baby, so she's never known what it was to be human. Hence her curiosity about Grey and his life. But it's forbidden for her kind to break the secrecy - understandably so - and when Grey's best friend is overheard by other ghouls when he tells Grey they should make all this public, he gets kidnapped. Cue Grey and Lavinia to the rescue! Or will they just become captives themselves, with Grey and his friend doomed to be turned into ghouls and never return to the light?
Things get tricky for a while, but there are some lovely confrontations, plots and plans, last-minute reinforcements, and a triumphant win - with a poignant coda. Very entertaining book, despite the fact that one of the protagonists does indeed eat dead people! (One of the panels early on shows Lavinia taking Grey past a coffin in the underground tunnels. "Is there a dead person in there?" he wonders, and she replies cheerfully "Not anymore." Hee!)
That'd put me off cemeteries for a while, but he's more concerned about losing his project. But that night he has a mysterious visitor, who leaves him a much more detailed miniature graveyard - which turns out to have some actual bones tucked away in the tiny crypts! Yeah, ghouls have a different perspective on things like that.
The tentative friendship develops when Lavinia, the ghoul, tells Grey about her kind and how they came to be - in her case, kidnapped by ghouls as a baby, so she's never known what it was to be human. Hence her curiosity about Grey and his life. But it's forbidden for her kind to break the secrecy - understandably so - and when Grey's best friend is overheard by other ghouls when he tells Grey they should make all this public, he gets kidnapped. Cue Grey and Lavinia to the rescue! Or will they just become captives themselves, with Grey and his friend doomed to be turned into ghouls and never return to the light?
Things get tricky for a while, but there are some lovely confrontations, plots and plans, last-minute reinforcements, and a triumphant win - with a poignant coda. Very entertaining book, despite the fact that one of the protagonists does indeed eat dead people! (One of the panels early on shows Lavinia taking Grey past a coffin in the underground tunnels. "Is there a dead person in there?" he wonders, and she replies cheerfully "Not anymore." Hee!)
Journal Entry 2 by GoryDetails at LFL [OBCZ] - New Searles Rd, #46 in Nashua, New Hampshire USA on Tuesday, October 26, 2021
GoryDetails at LFL [OBCZ] - New Searles Rd, #46 in Nashua, New Hampshire USA on Tuesday, October 26, 2021
Released 2 yrs ago (10/26/2021 UTC) at LFL [OBCZ] - New Searles Rd, #46 in Nashua, New Hampshire USA
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
Guidelines for safely visiting and stocking Little Free Libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the LFL site here.I left this book in my Little Free Library on this rainy day - hope someone enjoys it!
[See other recent releases in NH here.]
*** Released for the 2021 Tick Tock challenge. ***
*** Released for the 2021 Spook-tacular challenge. ***
This book is no longer in my Little Free Library; hope whoever took it enjoys it, and that it'll check in someday!
